Living for Others

Jesus frees us from the need to live for others so that we can live for the sake of others.  It is a confusing idea because this formula suggests that others are both our problem, and also that others are our destiny.  How can this be?  The only solution is that what Jesus is engaged in is new creation.  Our new loyalty is to Christ alone, as our Savior and Lord.  He reserves the right to re-establish the grounds of our relation to the world.  If we know others, it is through knowing him.  If others know us, it is in knowing him.  Paul’s gospel is ours: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20) 

 

Our tribulations and trials are now seen through the lens of the cross of Jesus Christ, for his experience is now the closest to us.  As Americans, this is surprising because normally training gives way at some point to full responsibility.  At some point, the boss stops doing your job for you and expects you as a fully trained employee to do the work all by yourself.  But maturity always corresponds to deeper resemblance to the life of God rather than cohering to some cultural norm of our society.  The life of God is mutuality, inter-dependence, creative collaboration, and endless love.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co-authors of a work of creation, and also of a work of redemption.  Jesus leads us not only to himself, but to a new relationship with his Father which is fashioned after his own relationship.  The Holy Spirit likewise points us to himself, and also beyond himself, to Jesus.  Our center of gravity is not in ourselves but in God, and his whole story as we find it unveiled to us in Scripture. 

 

This is the source of our identity, and its fruit is this: that we each become less brittle, less prone to wilt beneath the burdens of loving one another well.  Christ has established our lives so firmly in himself that we no longer need to manipulate one another, coerce one another, or compete with one another for exclusive prizes and elite recognition.  Nor do we discover what we shall become by looking at menus provided by marketers skilled in catering to the sovereign self.  Instead, we look to Christ, who does not cater to us, does not recognize our own selves as sovereign, and does not relate to us as a vendor happy to have our business. 

 

He has saved us from the other stories which threaten to overwhelm the story that he tells about us: that we are sheep, and that he is our shepherd.  He is the one who loves us, who knows our needs better than we do, and prepares for our future better than we can worry about it.  He turns nuisances, threats, and enemies into neighbors.  He frees us from the need to serve others so that we can freely live to serve others.

Knowing Christ Everyday

Knowing Christ everyday is vastly superior to knowing Christ once in awhile.  I was with a friend earlier today in the context of a Bible study who said that he was thankful that we could have a chance to be with the Lord together during the week.  There was agreement around the table.  To know Christ is always refreshing. 

 

Why do we resist him so frequently?  How is it that we can commune with him with such joy on a Sunday and manage to stay away from anything religious throughout the week?  Christ’s cross makes us so safe from all harm that we are able to finally see the truth – that we prefer our own ways to his, that we would rather be distracted with trifling novelties than to seek meaning from him.  He saves us from having to go too long on our own strength.  On our own strength, things fall through our fingers which, with him, will not be lost.  He frees us to love our neighbors more than ourselves, to embrace life with joy, to see immense value in those who aren’t well regarded in the world. 

 

Knowing Christ once in awhile is better than not knowing him at all.  I’ve known the sheer pleasure of being reminded of his grace when I hadn’t tended to him in weeks.  But knowing Christ every now and again leads to a lot of faking.  We fake-forgive.  We fake-love.  We fake-listen.  We pretend to be working harder than we are.  Knowing Christ everyday frees us from the feared consequences of the choices we make in this life.  Our bosses aren’t our lord.  Our parents aren’t our lord.  Jesus has freed us from other lords so that he can be our Lord in everything. 

 

And he is a good lord to have because he knows us.  He knows our ways.  He knows how little interest we have in being good subjects of his kingdom.  He has given us not only himself, but he has restored our wills.  We can be active participants in what God is doing right now.  We forget this because by the end of the day, we feel the weight of our sin – our egos are bruised, our tails are between our legs.  We know full well we aren’t the supermen or superwomen we thought we were once we’d had our morning cup of coffee.  But the Lordship of Christ is gentle and refreshing, so refreshing that he has allowed us to know his unsurpassable strength even when we are at our weakest. 

 

For every prayer I give to him, I find the strangest most comforting assurances – that by simply telling the simple truth without embellishment, that God may well renew the hope of those around me.  Confiding my dreads to him, I find that the all-powerful God wants goodness and love to arise from the circumstances of my life just as much as I do.

Focused on the Cross in all Circumstances

Staying focused on Christ and his cross is an essential in hard times.  When the world presses in on us, we have a refuge.  At the cross, our greatest sin is forgiven.  We are restored to the image of Jesus Christ.  We are reminded that Christ has overcome the world. 

 

In the same way that the world was lost through a bite of fruit, the world was won through one man’s death and resurrection.  Jesus carried all sin and death into the grave with him and buried it there.  Whatever guilt or shame we bear is merely a reminder of the truth that we are sinners and is meant only to drive us to claim again the truth that Jesus is a great Savior. 

 

It strikes me how often I flee to other comforts.  The comfort of a good home.  The comfort of a family who love me.  The comfort of health.  The comfort of gifts and talents.  The comfort of stability.  But when one of these seems to have shaky foundations, it becomes apparent that these things can’t save me.  They are idols, and a poor replacement for the wonderful salvation we have in Christ.  They can’t promise what he can.  They can’t deliver what he can.  But when all the other options have been tried, when I finally run out of answers, Christ is there. 

 

And he does satisfy with his grace, covering over my sin, suffering punishment on my behalf.  He also satisfies with his goodness.  He is a wonderful person, who carefully yet naturally avoided the clumping cliques of humanity, speaking easily for God and against every faction and special interest group.  Jesus alone speaks entirely with and for God.  Thus, he frustrates us when he does things we love, and then something we don’t understand and won’t conform to our expectations.  But we also love him for this.  “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” Says Isaiah 55:8. 

 

We learn to appreciate this when we wrestle long enough with our God-resentments and wrestle over them with God in prayer.  We appreciate it because although God wrestles with us, God uses the encounter to teach us what it means to actually wrestle with him and not another human being like ourselves.  Who do we think we are, to wrestle with God this way?  And yet, we come away simultaneously weaker and stronger – weaker, for we see the truth about who we are compared to God – but also, stronger, because God drew near to us.  We saw him.  We heard his voice. 

 

We come to love the God for who he is, not for who we’d sometimes like him to be.  We come to appreciate that God doesn’t cater to our whims, fancies, and desires, and we see that it is fitting that we should instead conform ourselves to him.  Rather than grudgingly accept this, we embrace it because our sin has been punished in him.  He is the one with the wounds in his wrists, wounds which say our name, and continually plead before God the Father in solidarity with us.  It is such good news – we are part of the life of God through Jesus Christ.

The Hidden Door and the Little People

Alex went out in the quiet night.  In the middle of town one night, he stepped on a hollow spot.  “How could that be?” he said.  “This is the normal ground.”  He touched it with his hand, and his fingers curled around a latch…as in a latch for a door.  He opened it and found a stairway descending.  He went down this stairway.

Inside, he could see very small men and women and children.  They were like the men, women, and children in the real world, only you had to look hard for them.  What made them stand out was their singing.  He heard the women singing a song which cast a good spell over him.  Their voices gracefully moved from note to note.  He didn’t even know what they were singing about.  He had never heard women sing before.  Their song entranced him.  He couldn’t believe he was there.  He must have sat there all night.  In fact, he sat there and listened to the music for days and days.  He was warned not to tell anyone about the place when he returned.  Up above, the bakery where he worked continued on without him.  When he reappeared, he continued to work.   A woman named Anna who worked at the same bakery wondered where he had gone.

Alex found a room in the back of the bakery where he could go.  In the silence of this room, he could still hear the song that the women would sing.  He would close his eyes.  He could hear their voices, gliding up to high notes, how differently a woman’s voice sounded from a man’s voice, even when they would speak.  It filled him with such longing, and he thought he could listen forever.  Anna would see him in this room.  She was so puzzled after weeks of this that she decided to keep an eye on his home at night, and see what he did.  She saw him go to the middle of town.  She hid behind one of the buildings and saw that he pulled the latch.  “There’s a hidden door in the middle of the town!” she thought.  When he had been down there for a few minutes, she also pulled the latch of the door, found the stairs and went down them. 

Inside, she could see very small men and women and children.  Like Alex, she thought they resembled those in the real world, yet they didn’t seem as special somehow.  She also found that what made them stand out was their singing.  She heard the men singing a song which cast a good spell over her.  They sang with robust passion with great feeling.  There was great meaning to what they sang, and there was also a jubilant, joyous sound.  She had never heard men sing before.  She didn’t know what they were singing about, but she found it very intriguing.  Their song entranced her.  She left before Alex could see her because she was embarrassed.  Alex would have loved for someone to have been there.  In fact, he would have loved for Anna to have been there, but he didn’t know.  And neither did she.

Soon enough they both would sit and enjoy the silence in the back of the bakery.  Alex didn’t feel strange because Anna seemed to like the silence as he did.  Sometimes when his eyes were closed, hearing the song, he would open his eyes and look at Anna.  He felt that even though he still didn’t know what the womens’ song was about, and even though he’d heard her sing before and she didn’t sing well, he thought she would enjoy singing this song.  And sometimes when Anna’s eyes were closed, hearing the song, she would open her eyes and look at Alex.  She felt that even though she still didn’t know what the mens’ song was about, and even though she’d heard Alex sing before, and he had a terrible voice, she thought he might enjoy singing this song.  Yet still they said nothing.

The owner of the bakery was a crocodile.  He was a wicked creature.  He had long since begun to wonder about all this, and saw them both sneak into the hidden door at different times.  Filled with surprised fury, he went down some time after Anna and he had the same experience.  He hated the music.  He hated the sound of mens’ voices.  And he hated the sound of the womens’ voices.  He hated the way they sang together.  He knew that when Alex and Anna were in the back room of the bakery they were listening to the song they heard from the hidden door.  The next time they sat there, he filled the room with squealing pigs so that they couldn’t hear the voices. 

The next day, the crocodile thought he would continue to fill the room with noise, but there came such a loud singing of mens and womens voices that the pigs all ran squealing from the room.  Alex and Anna recognized the song, but couldn’t see the people as they had before.  Then there came a voice.  “We are smaller when we are in your world.  But we are also louder.”

The crocodile sold them the bakery and never came back.  Alex and Anna sang this song at their wedding with all the little people present and they continued to sing it, living happily ever after.

Very Bad People

Literature professor Anthony Esolen has written a delightful and funny book about inspiring the imagination of the young.  He wants to do this of course.  But he has chosen to write this book satirically.  Thus, the title: Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.


He doesn't actually want to do this, of course.  And the feel of the book ultimately is that of lament because he fears he is expressing intentionally what our educational landscape in the U.S. does unintentionally.  He laments that there are many ways to destroy the imagination, and that a lot of them are being done well.


Here's a paragraph about how history becomes exciting or boring: "Or consider this piece of apparently harmless trivia: "The Normans conquered Sicily in the eleventh century."  Ah, who cares about that?  Nobody, so long as you have not made the mistake of introducing your student to geographical facts to boot.  For if he knows where Normandy and Sicily are on the globe, he may ask the obvious question, "How did the Normans get down there?  Did they go overland, or did they sail?"  And that might lead him to investigate the construction of their boats, or who was in control of Sicily before they arrived.  He might eventually find out that Viking raiders and traders had long been in contact with Constantinople, and that the Byzantine rulers there requested the help of the now Christian Normans in ousting their enemies, the Muslim Arabs, from Sicily.  How did Vikings end up in Byzantium?  It appears they trekked overland to the River Don in Russia, and then sailed down it to the Black Sea and Constantinople.  It would be better if the student could not tell Sicily from Saskatchewan, and knew only that Vikings were Very Bad People with funny hats who sailed a lot." (Esolen, 7)

Mysteries

A friend was talking to me today about some of his current reading.  He mentioned that he'd been reading murder mysteries.  He wondered if I liked reading mystery novels.  "Sure," I said, even as I struggled to think of one I'd picked up lately.


I was reminded that Eugene Peterson had written an appreciative passage on mysteries for his book Take and Read.  In the book, he recommends books across a vast swath of genre - all of which pertain to living the spiritual life well.  One of the chapters - perhaps the most unlikely of all the chapters - is "mysteries."


I found one particular passage quite intriguing:


"Gabriel Marcel always insisted that we have to choose whether we will treat life as a problem to be solved or as a mystery to be entered.  Why then do so many of the men and women who choose to enter the mystery slip aside from time to time to read mysteries that aren't mysteries at all, but problems that always get solved by the last page?  I think one reason may be that right and wrong, so often obscured in the ambiguities of everyday living, are cleanly delineated in the murder mystery.  The story gives us moral and intellectual breathing room when we are about to be suffocated in the hot air and heavy panting of relativism and subjectivism." (Peterson, Take and Read, 73)


First, I think the Marcel quote seems to imply that the audience will be nodding after the part about mystery.  The audience is shaking their head after the part about life being a problem to be solved, but are nodding in agreement about it being a mystery to be entered.  That appeals to us.  Life is messy.  Questions pile up before many satisfying answers do.  Taking into account that reality is not based on us, but upon God, we can say something similar: Living by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the life of Jesus Christ given for us, and for our Father with whom we are re-united - we live at the dictates of a holy, loving being who is not us.  Thus, we live mysteriously. 


But Peterson is also saying that this isn't enough for us.  We turn aside from the mystery to "mysteries" or "thrillers" which are actually more like "problems" because they get solved by the last page.  He thinks the reason we do this is because in a world that deliberately keeps the truth fuzzy, where to say something with great feeling must mean that it is real, that the delight a person experiences in the truth coming out at the end of a mystery thriller is comparable to the experience of breathing easy after suffocating in great humidity.  It is a slight reminder of all the ways that we hunger for truth.


So, since Peterson recommended some old mystery writers, here's the oldest one:


G.K. Chesterton, The Father Brown Stories (1929).  The mild and soft-spoken Father Brown, unassuming and unobtrusive, always took people by surprise when he solved a crime.  They didn't realize that a lifetime of hearing confessions was as good a training as one could ask for in crime detection.  W.H. Auden, confessed Christian and self-confessed detective story addict, wrote, "Father Brown solved his cases, not by approaching them objectively like a scientist or a policeman, but by subjectively imagining himself to be the murderer, a process which is good not only for the murderer but for Father Brown himself because, as he said, 'it gives a man his remorse beforehand'" (from Auden's The Dyer's Hand). (Peterson, 74)

Why the Westminster Delegates are Keeping their Heads Down

Chapter one of the Westminster Confession of Faith places the human being within a world that suggests God, hints at God but doesn't show us his true character, nor how we would relate to him.  God's revealed character, and what he means for the world, intends it to be, what he created it for - these are all things which come from God's revelation, or unveiling of himself in his Word.  Is this the written Word, or the one referred to in John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word?"  Probably both, but in Westminster organization of Christian teaching, the written Word, the Bible is the exclusive authority on God and this authority rests on God alone, not on our ability to read it well.   


I explored briefly in my last post the objections to Westminster beginning this way.  In summary these arguments ask, "Who begins our journey in the Christian faith?" 


"Jesus." we answer. 


"And if we grow in our faith, how did that come about?" 


"Because all of faith is fellowship with God through Christ, we say again - Jesus is how we grow in our faith." 


"And when we at last come to the completion of our journey of faith, what do we expect to see or find?"


"Because all of eternal life consists in a full fellowship with God that will no longer be by faith, but by sight, we say again - Jesus is our destination."


"Then, if Jesus is the beginning, middle, and end of all our journeying toward God, why does the Westminster Confession begin with teaching about Holy Scripture?"


And here we would agree.  What good reason would Westminster Confession of Faith have for beginning with Scripture rather than with God?  The complaint comes to mind of people who love their Bibles so much that they think they'll be reading them in heaven.  Is that what we're dealing with here?  A case of excessive biblio-philia?  Should we want to lift the Westminster delegates' bearded heads up from their Bibles so that they can actually see God?


Robert Letham finds three reasons why the Westminster folks are keeping their heads down in their Bibles.  The first and third reasons have to do with other documents such as the influential-at-the-time Irish Articles, and also with the development of textual criticism of written sources including the Bible.  The second reason is this: the Bible is how we come to know about God.  He writes: "Epistemologically, it is the best starting point, while a beginning with God would have given a more ontological focus.  It was a matter of judgment." (121)


Epistemology and ontology, as word choices, drone a bit.  They sound academic and they intimidate.  But they happen everytime we learn anything.  You are in front of a group of people.  You are teaching them how to make a spinach and feta cheese omelet.  How do you begin?  You could begin with the reason we're all there and talk about the omelet.  Show a picture of it.  Describe how it tastes.  That's why we're really there.  But then you might think - "these people know what an omelet is.  They know how it tastes.  That's why they're here.  They don't want me to talk about the omelet.  They want me to talk about the bowl, the egg-beater, the stove-pan, the spatula, how long it cooks, how much salt to use, whether to cook the feta or just toss it on top.  They want to engage with me about the steps I take, the process I go through to get from having no omelet to the place where I can finally sit down with the omelet and enjoy it."


That's a fairly ridiculous illustration and you can tell I'm not really a foodie, but our teacher has moved from an ontological approach to teaching to an epistemological approach.  Instead of focusing on what the omelet is, the teacher focuses on the way to get to the omelet.  Both approaches are important.  The ontological approach is more beautiful.  It holds the object itself up before you.  "This is an omelet."  Seeing an omelet has a motivating quality to make one, especially if you're hungry.  Ontology draws us in.  Epistemology helps us to set up our home.  Ontology shows us the nature of the omelet, motivates us to make it, and epistemology shows us how to make one anytime we'd like.  Education has happened.  And your life is no longer omelet-less.


That the Westminster Confession of Faith chose to begin with epistemology would suggest to us that the confession is very practical.  Most wouldn't think so by looking through it.  That the Westminster Confession of Faith chose to begin with epistemology would suggest to us that the confession is very human-centered.  Yet this is also not apparently the case, for few documents are so God-centered.  So which is it?  Is the Westminster Confession of Faith human-centered - a bunch of folks who are too busy in their Bibles to look up and see God?  Or if it's God-centered, how ironic that it begins not with God, but with the way we know God - the Bible.


The Westminster Confession of Faith describes the Bible as very comprehensive with regard to things of God that we need to know: "The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture..." (1.6)  The Confession will go on very quickly to become much more God-centered.  Beginning with Scripture is the Confession's way of teaching us that of all God is up to in the whole universe, he is chiefly concerned with us.  It is saying "you want to know God.  That is where you want to be.  That is where the Bible will not lead you astray.  God has given it a hallowed place to show us who God really is, and also who we really are.  And this is the key to everything to come.  We begin here, because only if we begin here, will we see what God is really like."  So the Westminster Confession of Faith begins in a human-centered way precisely so that it can center itself in God.